Drug menace? Chicken coming home to roost

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

August 13, 2007

The idea that it is only between the years 2000 and 2007 that our culture suddenly grew coarse and now permits violence and drug use is so absurd that only a propagandist or a liar would want to make that assertion.

True, the incidence of drug trade and drug apprehension by authorities have grown larger.

Hardly a day goes by without some headline in a local paper bringing these events to our attention.

Among the most spectacular ones to date, and yet to be explained fully, is the disappearance of 77 parcels of cocaine from the vessel M. V. Benjamin, in which a commissioner of police is alleged to be implicated in the disappearance.

Before that, there was the case involving a sitting parliamentarian who was apprehended and jailed in the U.S.A for attempt to import illicit drugs into that country.

The case of the two British teenagers is also unfolding in the court system in Ghana. The enablers behind them are alleged to be Ghanaians.

Along with the drug smuggling is a wave of violent crimes, armed robbery and murder; a culture that is no stranger to the drug business elsewhere but, as some assume, alien to traditional life in Ghana.

In South America, many countries are struggling under the violent experience of the drug culture, making normal life and legitimate economic activities in some cities there almost impossible.

It is, therefore, not strange to see some Ghanaians being apprehensive about the state of the burgeoning illegal drug activities in the country.

For these folks, the assumption is the drug culture had its nascence within the past seven years. But how such culture of drug and violence gained grounds so swiftly in an erstwhile pristine country is a question that they are yet to consider.

The only explanation for a view as expressed above is that it is the easy way out and the most politically correct way for a different ideology to blame the other, which happens to be in administration.

Forgotten in the criticism of the current administration’s effort to control the drug culture is the policing; the frequency and the efficacy of the prosecution within the court system under the current administration.

The critics forget that the criminal types that are hurting our society today could not have had their beginnings within the short seven year that the current administration has been in office.  And that it is a logical impossibility to assume so.

The crime in the country today is not being perpetrated by seven-year old.  These are not the ones carrying the guns today.

Rather, it could be logical to assume that those doing the killings and violence in the drug trade now and the ones providing general terror to the whole society today belong to a criminal group that was born before this decade and thus did mature as felons before the advent of this administration.

Such criminals in our country are mostly poorly educated and thus very gullible.  So they are conditioned to think the way to a happy life is through the acquisition of sudden and unqualified wealth; hence the drug trade becomes an attraction.

It may not be too uncomfortable to link the politics of our country today to the growth of the drug culture. 

The formative period of the life of the perpetrators of crime in the country today ties in neatly to our worsening political condition.

These felons have known only one political condition; revolution - violent revolution as politics for social “change.”

From 1966 until now, we have had several revolutions. The most famous or infamous one was the 1981 revolt. And it was during the period after that our whole social structure and its culture became destabilized.

Firing squad became public spectacles. Schools were closed down at the sign of least disturbances. Violence was accepted as a way of settling scores, whether justified or not. And people of means were made to look like criminals, whether or not they truly were.

To buttress the revolutionary spirit of the time, arms were distributed freely among young tugs, uneducated or poorly educated.

And the youth of this period became acclimatized to the violence.

Enter President Kufuor in 2001 and Ghana began to see an unprecedented growth in our economy and be seen as one of the foremost democracies in Africa with growth potential that can catapult her into the Second World category.

The criminal types only see in this new reality a potential and the opportunity to carry on their nefarious activities.

These are the pests that continue to nurture the criminal types in our society today.

What the critics have failed to observe, in response to the proliferation of drug crime the quick response, is the frequency and efficacy of the policing efforts that bring the criminal for prosecution within the court system under this administration.

Within the same legal system encouraged by the Kufuor regime, the alleged criminal types will have their day in court rather than being executed at the firing range, as was done in the previous regime.

As we carry on the fight against the drug culture, one thing we must do is tone down the rhetoric. Ghana is not yet a Colombia where a Medellin cartel is threatening to bring down the government.

And the "Targor" of Ghanaian drug trafficking is not at the same level as "Pablo Escoba." 

All the same, we must encourage our police and the security forces, not dishearten them from enforcing drug laws, as we must increase our effort for discipline.  Promote respect for hard work and a culture of deference for diligent, honest people, whether they are poor or not.

And from our traditions of old, learn to promote scorn for people with shady backgrounds and not provide cover for the criminal types by attributing the wave of crime in the country now to the policies of an administration in power today.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, August 13, 2007
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